Hour-long game shows?

[ActualRetailMike]

Besides the Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour and the long-running TPiR, how many game shows are/were an hour long?

Also, when TPiR first debuted the 60-minute format, was it being called the "Price is Right Hour" or something similar?   (I do know that at the beginning of the opening credits, they made a point of flashing the words "Hour Power" in that screen frame with the blinking lights.)  There was a tendency to put the word "Hour" in a 60-min-long show title, as though that was some sort of aberration.  Exceptions were made for show formats that are expected to be an hour long, such as dramas, crime dramas, or some variety shows.  Ironically, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour was renamed The BB/RR Show, when they extended it from 60 to 90 minutes.

[Dbacksfan12]

Family Feud Challenge.  IIRC, Family Challenge was an excruciating hour.  Current LMAD is an hour show as well.

[TLEberle]

Family Feud Challenge.  IIRC, Family Challenge was an excruciating hour.

Since you brought it up, I don't know that Family Challenge would have been better as a half-hour, just shorter. I suppose if you want to do Family Double Dare but don't want to pay for the rights to do it, that's your out-draw, but jeez.

Millionaire ushered in the hour-long game show as a thing--many game shows since 1999 have been 60 minutes instead of 30.

[BrandonFG]

Wheel experimented with an hour-long format not long after TPiR expanded. It only lasted a couple of months at most. I heard LMAD did the same thing around the same time, but not sure if that was ever verified.

With the exception of ABC's Sunday night block, most of the primetime games since Millionaire have been an hour long. The ones that premiered post-Deal or No Deal were a chore to sit through.

IIRC, Paranoia from 2000 was also an hour.

[aaron sica]

Also, when TPiR first debuted the 60-minute format, was it being called the "Price is Right Hour" or something similar?   (I do know that at the beginning of the opening credits, they made a point of flashing the words "Hour Power" in that screen frame with the blinking lights.) 

They never referred to it as the "Price is Right Hour", but they alluded to it being an hour in the opening spiel ("...the fabulous 60 minute Price is Right!") and the mid-show outro to the commercial ("Stay tuned for more pricing games and the fabulous showcases which are coming up on the second half of 'The Price is Right'!").

/I miss the mid-show outro with the audience shot and the logo

[BillCullen1]

Wheel experimented with an hour-long format not long after TPiR expanded. It only lasted a couple of months at most. I heard LMAD did the same thing around the same time, but not sure if that was ever verified. 

I remember seeing LMAD as an hour show with Monty on ABC. IIRC, even Hollywood Squares was expanded to an hour briefly on NBC's daytime schedule.

[snowpeck]

LMAD and Hollywood Squares each experimented with an hourlong format for a week in 1975. LMAD was week of December 1 and Hollywood Squares was week of November 3, the same day TPIR went to an hour full time.

Wheel also experimented with the hourlong format the week of November 3 and would go to 60 minutes full time on December 1. It reverted to half an hour on January 19, 1976. It seems (unsurprisingly) the networks were all trying to steal each other's thunder.

Family Feud was also an hour during Richard Dawson's 1994-95 season in some markets.

[tvmitch]

Millionaire ushered in the hour-long game show as a thing--many game shows since 1999 have been 60 minutes instead of 30.

From what I understand after working in TV ad sales for awhile is that the hourlong formats are convenient, because that's how the ads are sold in prime, by the hour. An advertiser can buy the Sun 9-10pm hour and know they'll air during $100K Pyramid at some point, and get the ratings points for the demos who are watching that show. This is how local advertising works, I have no experience with national advertisers but I'm sure they are more choosy.

Even the half-hour sitcoms are (mostly) sold as such; buying the 8-9pm hour where two sitcoms air, you know you'll air in one of those shows. When the networks air two sitcoms in the same hour, most of the time, it's a very similar or same target audience.

I would have thought it would be interesting to stagger the shows and run Pyramid/MG/Pyramid/MG, but Sales would give a pushback on that because the demos are different within the hour, plus it breaks up the flow of the shows, and who knows what else.

[thomas_meighan]

The primetime runs of "The Big Payoff", which aired on NBC in the summers of 1952 and 1953, also ran for an hour (8 to 9 p.m., per Brooks and Marsh).

I wonder whose idea it was to expand TPIR. Were CBS and/or G-T taking stock of the soap opera expansions in '75 and looking into whether games could be expanded as well, or was the idea developed independently?

[calliaume]

The primetime runs of "The Big Payoff", which aired on NBC in the summers of 1952 and 1953, also ran for an hour (8 to 9 p.m., per Brooks and Marsh).

I wonder whose idea it was to expand TPIR. Were CBS and/or G-T taking stock of the soap opera expansions in '75 and looking into whether games could be expanded as well, or was the idea developed independently?

TPIR ran for an hour during a test week from September 1 through September 5, 1975 (between the exit of Spin-Off and the debut of Give-n-Take).  That gave G-T some time to work out what few bugs there were in the system.  I don't know how long before the idea of an hour-long show had been under consideration, but they did a good job in making the full hour worth watching - it might have been just as easy to say, "Okay, we'll have seven people play pricing games, and the top two will still be in the Showcase."  I think someone said here that Monty Hall was reluctant to expand LMaD to an hour because there was no logical way to make the full hour more interesting than the half-hour was - would you just split the show in two and pick out a Big Dealer from each group?

I don't think the Wheel of Fortune expansion was bad - two three-round games; one head-to-head game for the two winners; day's champion plays a bonus round similar to the one we all know and love - but I'm sure it was more rushed (November 3 for the test run, December 1 for full time) - and the first half-hour of the hour-long Wheel ran against the last half-hour of TPIR.

As for whether hour-long soaps inspired hour-long game shows, I've never seen anything in print saying that.  But you've got to think it's easier to have one production crew responsible for five hours of programming a week instead of two and a half.  I doubt the fees CBS paid G-T to produce the show doubled (and I'm pretty sure the salaries for the show's staffers didn't double, either).

[danderson]

Peter Marshall liked doing Hollywood Squares for a hour, would have that worked, with the self-contained format they used for nighttime transitioning into daytime possibly?

[Neumms]

I don't think the Wheel of Fortune expansion was bad - two three-round games; one head-to-head game for the two winners; day's champion plays a bonus round similar to the one we all know and love.

Did the two winners' game have more dough on the Wheel? Otherwise, it's a game that doesn't ramp up, you just play until time runs out. There's not much suspense about who'll end up with the most money, even with a semi-finals and finals. Hollywood Squares had the same problem. All they could do was play more of it. There was no build.

Millionaire worked because there was a build. Then when it started over, there was Fastest Finger to change the pace.

[TLEberle]

The winner of the championship got to play for a bonus prize. Isn't that enough tension for you?

[Neumms]

Theoretically--I realize it won't happen--would a one-game show like J!, The Challengers or Sale of the Century work if the game went for an hour? The first two could add extra Final Jeopardy-ish deals along the way, maybe an end-game. $OTC had extras like Fame Game to vary the rhythm, and the bargains kept the game close.

Despite its troubles, I loved Mike Reilly's Monopoly. Maybe it could have worked as an hour. It needed more time for the dice rolling part, and maybe there'd be openings for deals between the players.

[Neumms]

The winner of the championship got to play for a bonus prize. Isn't that enough tension for you?

It evidently wasn't enough to draw an audience.